A new class at the University of Michigan hopes to help students be savvier news consumers.
The course, called "Fake News, Lies, and Propaganda: How to Sort Fact From Fiction", will be available next fall.
Angie Oehrli is a University of Michigan librarian who helped develop the course. She hopes the class will provide tangible skills for students to recognize and avoid fabricated stories that pass themselves off as legitimate news.
"These are issues that don't have simple answers, and so the class will help students develop habits of mind when it comes to news literacy," Oehrli says.
Fake, sensational and disreputable news have become a topic of interest for educators across the U.S. since the presidential election. Oehrli says the topic is complex, but important for students to understand.
